Opinion

Mercury News editorial: Obama ready for a fight on gun laws, finally

Mercury News Editorial

Posted:
01/16/2013 01:11:16 PM PST

Updated:
01/16/2013 07:30:05 PM PST

"All right, here we go."

Those were President Barack Obama's words Wednesday after he signed 23 executive actions and proposed the most sweeping set of gun-reform laws in a generation. He was acknowledging the beginning of a long and difficult fight that he is finally embracing after years of inaction.

It will be savage, if the National Rifle Association's new ad invoking the Obama daughters' security is any indication. And not all of the president's proposals will be enacted. But given the breadth of the executive orders, the emotional campaign Obama is waging and the mood of the nation, it's hard to imagine that nothing will change. The years of treating gun regulation as unmentionable are over.

President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, standing left clapping, and children who wrote the president about gun violence following last month's shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., signs executive orders to reduce gun violence, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, in the South Court Auditorium at the White House in Washington. From left are: Biden Hinna Zeejah, 8, and Nadia Zeejah, Hinna's mother, Taejah Goode, 10, and Kimberly Graves, Taejah's mother, Julia Stokes, 11, and Dr. Theophil Stokes, Julia's father, Grant Fritz, 8, and Elisabeth Carlin, Grant's mother. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A useful discussion has to be informed by facts. The executive order dealing with today's lack of solid information about gun violence may well be Obama's most important.

Facts are not in the NRA's interest, so in 1996 it pushed Congress to bar the Centers for Disease Control from conducting research "to advocate or promote gun control." The CDC had angered the gun lobby by publishing studies showing that people with guns in their homes were at far greater risk of homicide and suicide.

Obama now has ordered the CDC to research the causes and prevention of gun violence, which his legal team concluded would be allowed under the ban. "We don't benefit from ignorance," he said.

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But the gun industry does. It does not want objective research because if it were persuasive in indicating the need for change, lawmakers might have no choice but to act. For Obama's order to be carried out, Congress has to authorize $10 million -- a pittance -- for CDC studies. This may be the first test of how beholden members are to the gun lobby.

Despite the right's predictable cries of tyranny, the president's executive orders are relatively modest. To make real progress in limiting gun violence, Congress will need to act.

The least likely of Obama's proposals to succeed is a renewed assault weapons ban, sensible as it is. But it can be a good bargaining chip. Given that there are millions of these guns circulating, a ban on high-capacity magazines -- which could neuter existing weapons -- may be a better approach.

Universal background checks should be nonnegotiable, however. Gun reform groups consider this their highest priority, since about 40 percent of gun purchases today are not made from licensed gun dealers, the only sellers required to perform the checks. That's a public safety problem and an unfair disadvantage to responsible sellers.

The fight now turns to Congress, where the House in particular will be a challenge. Obama implored voters horrified by the Newtown slaughter to contact their representatives, particularly in red states.

The availability and use of guns in American life astonishes people in every other industrialized country. What made sense in the Wild West seems insane today. Obama's proposals are a minimum standard for a civilized society. To us and many Americans, this seems obvious. But not to all.